Our Unconscious Contract From Childhood

By Betsy Bergquist, Imago Therapist

At the Sunday evening conclusion of our weekend workshops, we always hear broad acclaim and appreciation from couples for the dialogue processes they have been so busy learning over the weekend.

They tell us of their motivation, commitment, hope, and intention to use the tools to keep increasing their self-understanding and healing their relationships. If you are a workshop graduate, this probably sounds very familiar.

But then two weeks, three weeks after the workshop, some couples call us because they are beginning to slip back into old styles of communication that controlled the relationship prior to the workshop and which they knew did not help to move them forward.

They call us because they need help to get back on track and keep moving forward. The resistance to changing old behaviors can be very challenging. Even though the workshop has impelled couples to become more conscious about old patterns and also curious about what keeps pulling at them to do it anyway the pull to our "default setting" may persist.

As for the resistance: We resist change to our personality structure because change may mean breaking the "family contract" we made and reinforced for ourselves growing up. This "contract" was the adaptation we had to make unconsciously as children.

The adaptation also included making a defense - a rationale - for our behavior and also included an "explanation" to ourselves that required assigning blame either to others or to ourselves. The contract felt - and can still appear to feel - completely "natural" - after all, we've lived with it at some level all our lives.

Here's how the contract worked in my own relationship (until we discovered the dialogue ten years ago): it meant defending my entitlements to "more" and blaming Bruce for all of my lack (emotional pain and depression). For Bruce it meant defending his attempts to fill my lack by asserting or attempting to show how "hard he was trying" and then blaming himself for failure to ever meet my needs adequately. All this seemed completely "natural".

As for the strong pull: These old behaviors once kept you safe in your childhood family. For example, if not sharing and talking appeared to keep you safe as a child because in your family the child who spoke or acted out got all the blame and abuse, it makes sense now that sharing and talking would feel very dangerous.

Or conversely, if talking/acting out behaviors as a child seemed to get you the attention and visibility you needed in your family even though attention was limited and mostly unavailable, it would make sense that giving up that behavior would feel dangerous. You might be abandoned.

So for us it's completely understandable why actually using the tools of dialogue faithfully, accurately, and fully is challenging - Bruce and I know and appreciate this from extensive personal experience! Yet it's also essential: piecemeal, sporadic, or crisis-management-only approaches just don't suffice.

So we also have personally come to see that the way to Carnegie Hall, as the old saw goes, is through "practice, practice, practice" and that the rewards are more than well worth the effort partners may make in this true team effort.

Consider coming to a workshop and learning along with other skills, this valuable tool of Couples Dialogue and the potential it has for deepening your understanding of each other in contrast to present communication styles of blaming and criticizing, and defending.